3D Programming for the Web

WebGL around the net, 2-July-2014

Web-based Virtual Reality: fast, cheap, out of control and now RUNNING IN YOUR BROWSER.

Virtually Awesome! Vlad Vukićević, WebGL creator and VR guru at Mozilla, discusses the First Steps for VR on the Web. Firefox now has support for Oculus stereo rendering of Canvas elements, CSS3 3D transforms, mixing Canvas and CSS into single 3D display space, and VR head tracking.

Google is trying to keep one-up Oculus and keep up with Firefox with its new Chrome VR Experiments demo site. The site is really for Android-based Cardboard apps, but you can see the demos in mono on a regular web page.

Music video + WebGL + embeddable content == three great tastes! Google’s The Cube is “an experimental platform for interactive storytelling” that features videos playing on a cube surface, connected to Google Play. A new way to sell music?

Perf matters: last week I gave a talk on WebGL and Web Site Performance at WebPerfDays Silicon Valley. We are just at the beginning of this field of study – and I encourage WebGL devs to start thinking about traditional web site performance issues when scaling up your applications to reach millions. Feel free to comment on the SlideShare or mail me directly if you are keen to do something in this area.